More "miscellany" (General)

by dhw, Thursday, November 18, 2021, 11:31 (862 days ago) @ David Turell

Survival

dhw: It is therefore absurd to claim that designing a species-changing organ which is required for survival means that survival plays no role in driving evolution to the next stage. What is evolution if it is not changes in body forms which lead to speciation?

DAVID: Word play. Survival does not drive evolution is my point. Yours is an attempt for pure Darwinism.

dhw: The word play is yours. If a new body form is designed to aid survival, it makes no sense to say that the design was not driven by the need or desire to aid survival.

DAVID: Off my point, survival does not act as a driving force for evolution.

dhw: So when conditions change, and an organism’s structure changes to meet the new requirements (= improve chances of survival) - thereby creating the new species that form the whole history of evolution - the changes are not driven by the need to meet new requirements (= improve chances of survival). Not for the first time, I am baffled by your logic.

DAVID: God designs forms for future introduction into new environments, as in the whale series so they are prepared for future survival. Darwin style fight for survival not needed.

We are not talking about Darwinian competition. I don’t know why you are always so anxious to bring Darwin into these discussions. You believe that your God operated on pre-whales in advance, to give them flippers instead of legs, and then he let them go into the water. Even in your theory, what was the purpose of giving them flippers? As you say, to prepare them for future survival. If the innovation is a preparation for survival, how can you then argue that the innovation is not driven by the need for the organism to survive?

Balance of Nature: importance of ecosystems
QUOTE "The angiosperms became hugely diverse themselves, but they also created enormous numbers of niches for other plants and animals, so you get tens more species on each hectare of the Earth's surface than you would if angiosperms had not become established when they did.'"

DAVID: The current environment on Earth developed stepwise over giant amounts of time. These systems supply our food. Note that humans arrived long after all of this was in place. We could not have grown to current population size if this were not present. Looks like great planning to me.

I don’t think anyone will deny that the current environment developed over giant amounts of time, or that humans arrived after giant amounts of time had elapsed, during which countless environments came and went, as did countless forms of life with their countless ecosystems, most of which had no connection whatever with humans. If our ecosystem was planned, then so were all the other ecosystems. Maybe the planner just enjoyed planning different ecosystems, life forms etc. Who knows? Fascinating and revealing article, though, for which many thanks.


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